


From the Fetter of Oblivion

by joisbishmyoga



Series: The Immortal Realm of Barbelo [3]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Gorou knows more than Akira did and that is a problem, Gorou redemption continues, I got to make a calendar for storyboarding again!, I might diss your favorite series and I am sorry, M/M, allusions to forced prostitution (not Gorou), also sorry the chapters are so short, backstory and worldbuilding, mix-n-matching lore for titling reasons, so many headcanons and self-indulgence, some authorial soapboxing, srsly no clue about how courts work outside tv and I don't watch courtroom dramas anyway, there are just too many ways to get rotten adults going there, this is the other headcanon for wtf happened to Kirijo, this solution has been obvs to me for years come on Atlus plz, violence towards kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-02-29 06:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: 20) They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?21) The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome,22) and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died.23) In a aeon I was released from a world, and in a Type from a type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient.- The Gospel of Mary





	1. Prologue - Strength

**Author's Note:**

> \- prison in Japan is divided into three kinds of facility: prisons for sentenced adults, correction centers kind of like boarding schools for sentenced minors, and detention houses for prisoners awaiting trial. I couldn't find out if minors awaiting trial also have the school thing or not, so I've unilaterally decided "yes" and that they have prison jumpsuits instead of school uniforms for budget reasons.
> 
> \- if the letters seem odd, that is Japanese etiquette. The only translation I could find for the greeting and closing words (which are paired) is that the closing phrase for the set I didn't use means "omitting the closing remarks" and generally means you're skipping formalities for lack of time to write them. If anyone wants to tell me what the opening-closing phrase pair I DID use means, I'd be grateful.
> 
> \- don't know if the law about mail is true in Japan. It is in the US, where I live. Make a note, guys, if someone opens your mail without your permission it's a federal crime.
> 
> \- the Japanese legal system is vastly different from the American one, which I don't have any experience with anyway. So, it's all wikipedia and wild guesses.

"I do not understand you."   
  
Gorou slowly blinked open his eyes, the world wavering a moment before his vision cleared.  Lavenza was all blacks and pale grays cutting across the dimness of his tiny, windowless cell, one edge of her limned in the sickly orange of hallway lights that were never turned off.  The twin glints of yellow could've been the lights' reflection in her eyes. (They weren't.)   
  
Pushing himself somewhat upright, he rested his heavy head on one hand and braced that hand's forearm unsteadily on one knee.  "D'you have to?" he murmured, low enough to hopefully go unheard.   
  
The child turned her lambent golden gaze on him.  "You were free," she informed him. "Why would you replace your chains?"   
  
For a moment -- barely even one, a handful of seconds at best -- Gorou considered telling her something cryptic, or perhaps sanctimonious and trite like 'it was the right thing to do', but then a deep yawn erased the notion in a nearly painful stretch of muscles from jaw to throat.  Screw it. He wanted to go back to sleep.   
  
"I wasn't free," he told her wearily.  "One la--" another yawn split the word, "--last chain.  Here." He tapped his chest, and she blinked at the gesture, uncomprehending.  "My guilt."   
  
"Oh."   
  
_ But you saved the world _ , Ann had said.  Lavenza didn't waste the breath.   
  
"Humans are so  _ odd _ ," she murmured, before flickering out like a candle.   
  
Gorou slumped back onto his cot and went back to sleep.   



	2. Part One - Judgement

Prison wasn't so different from an orphanage, really.  It was considerably less gratingly chaotic and cluttered of course, due to the utter lack of possessions and social freedoms allowed, and the food (miso, pickles, rice, and an egg or slice of tofu for protein, all slightly metallic and mushy from indifferent cooking and cheapest quality) more plentiful, but other than that and the color of the uniforms Gorou might as well have been six years old again.   
  
The automatic suspicion of any new face among the adults was identical too.  Not that Gorou had been there long enough to know who was new among the guards -- this was only his first full morning: he'd spent the previous day being processed and only joined the inmate population for dinner -- but being able to read the room was a well-honed survival skill.  It was plainly obvious that no one knew the fresh-faced, young female officer who'd helped escort Gorou from solitary for breakfast.   
  
Gorou kept his gaze firmly on his rice, watching her only in his peripheral vision, managing it mostly by dint of the contrast between her bobbed tea-blonde hair and her police hat.   
  
The woman seemed young enough, twenty-two or so, that she couldn't have graduated the police academy more than a couple of months ago.  Given the length of duty rotations, in fact, she'd probably gotten her badge just last week. Which meant that she couldn't possibly know which higher-ups and fellow officers had been implicated in Shidou's corruption by their brutality towards Akira.  Then again, she also was highly unlikely to be part of the corruption.   
  
Either someone had tapped her to block attempts by the conspiracy to get to Gorou, or someone had tapped her to be that attempt.   
  
Whose plant was she?   
  
Whoever she was, she was a rookie and so had to wait until after Gorou's table had been allowed to put their dishes into washing services and joined the line waiting to leave.  That was when her partner stepped up to Gorou's side, the woman trotting in his wake and trying not to look it.   
  
"Your lawyer's here," the older cop said, flinty.  "Move it."   
  
How tellingly quick.  Gorou wondered what kind of public defender they'd assigned him.  Some new graduate with the ink still wet on his degree, last in his class and assured to bungle Gorou into taking most of the blame?  Or perhaps someone with a reputation of dragging out cases to inflate his billables, who would leave Gorou in paperwork limbo until he was twenty and could only be sentenced to an adult prison?  That second one seemed unlikely, given that the government was going to have to pay the bill. Then again, he'd embarrassed the state royally, and was flat broke...   
  
Gorou mentally resigned himself to being harrassed for the next several weeks about hiding away money he could use to pay restitution.  No lawyer, even one of Japan's notoriously incompetent defense lawyers, would believe a hitman to be as poorly paid as Gorou had been.   
  
Except, perhaps, Sae Niijima, who sat waiting in the interview room like she was actually a defense lawyer instead of prosecution.  She barely moved as he was marched inside, her dried-blood gaze cold and fixed on him as he was seated and the cops took up guard positions flanking the door.   
  
Gorou could feel the weight of her basilisk stare.  He kept his head down. A show of submission could only help at this point... and he really didn't want to see the shuttered expression of someone who'd.  Somewhat seemed to respect him. Before.   
  
He could see her rest her elbows on the table.  The angle of her forearms indicated that she had her hands together-- probably interlaced her fingers thoughtfully, he'd seen her do that before, hiding her mouth in a way similar to her sister's own thinking pose.  A way Sae had likely tried to train herself out of, as it wasn't particularly intimidating behind a desk.   
  
"I'd wondered," Sae eventually said, her words dropping abruptly into the tense silence.  "After your appearance in the station that night didn't appear in any of the paperwork."   
  
She'd wondered---?  Gorou's head snapped up in dawning horror.  "You didn't-- you didn't tell anyone," he deduced, the words sticking in his throat even as he realized how close a call she'd had.   _ She'd figured out who killed Akira _ .

Her flinty expression didn't so much as twitch.  "I didn't know who'd erased you from the records.  And with the Director's suspiciously convenient death, no one was demanding the results of my interview."  She leaned back, folding her arms across her body. "Then you disappeared, and I knew."

And she'd still kept her silence.

Sae exhaled slowly, the tension leaving her shoulders and voice.  "I'm glad you're all right." Gorou stared. "Well then. Take me through this.  How did it all start?"   
  
It started with the orphanage.  With his mother's worn face and a bloodless hand trailing from the side of the bath.  With lights pulsing red-white-red off the dull gray helmet of an EMT, grousing too loudly over his paperwork about irresponsible women.  With a man in a cheap suit shoving a trash bag of clothes into Gorou's hands and steering him into the car.   
  
With Masayoshi Shidou, and only one name on Gorou's family register.   
  
"... Once upon a time, a middle school student by the name of Gorou Akechi received a smartphone with a very strange app on it..."

  
  
-0-0-0-   
  


  
The icon on Gorou's new phone couldn't have looked more like malware if it tried, which was indication enough it wasn't.  A black background, a scarlet eye, it was so unfriendly it had to belong to some sort of horror game that Gorou hadn't downloaded.   
  
No bets that the game would subscribe itself to Gorou's allowance and drain what few funds he'd managed to save out of his student account.  And then overdraft it. Bill collectors hunting a fourteen-year-old, no thank you.   
  
Gorou hit delete and put the phone into his pocket.   
  
When he opened it on the subway after school to put his homework in the calendar, the app had returned.  This time, Gorou checked the home screen after deleting it, only to find it remained untouched front and center.   
  
Figured.  It just figured phones for orphans would have bugs.  And of course he could hardly afford to take it to get fixed... maybe he could google how to troubleshoot it himself, once he had the time.  For now, best he kept the phone off so the app couldn't wriggle into his passwords and eat the OS.   
  
Sighing, Gorou put the phone away again and stared out over the platform, ads dancing on video billboards in the corner of his vision.  He still had a good eight minutes til his train, and if he didn't pay attention he'd end up on the express coming before it. He'd done that several times, his nose in a book or repeating literature quotes or practicing answers for the teacher in his head, and it was a pain and a half making the turnaround after the train skipped his stop.   
  
WcDonald's ad.  Maybe someday he'd find out if burgers tasted as good as people said.   
  
Junes extended commercial.  The Junes girl took a friend on a magical trip through the department store, the two of them dancing in sync with its friendly employees and customers and the mascot bear, and everything was sweetness and light and enough money to buy anything their heart desired at low low prices that Gorou still couldn't afford.   
  
Petal Bear Solid's new movie, which Gorou could expect to eventually see played on repeat on the orphanage tv until everyone over the age of ten was thoroughly sick of it.  At least it looked good in the trailer: last year the hit movie grabbed from the discount bin at New Year's had been made cheaply for tv, and the artwork hadn't been fixed for the DVD.   
  
Mentos commercial, and the video blipped.  It didn't do much more than tap Gorou's attention back into reality as the train pulled in.  He checked the annoucement sign -- it was the right train, not the express -- and headed for the doors.  "Let's go," he murmured to himself, and   
  
reality   
  
_ changed _ .   
  


  
-0-0-0-   
  


  
"A candy commercial?  Really?"   
  
"Do you know how rare a word 'mementos' is even in English?" Gorou asked, tired and wry.  "Once I figured out how the app worked, I went looking." He rubbed a hand through his bangs.   "It's used mostly for high school vocabulary tests. People don't actually  _ say  _ it.  The chances that I would've ever been in earshot of the word being said at all in Tokyo, much less specifically in a train station without being on a train?  It had to be rigged-- part of what made me think I'd been specially chosen, later on."

Of course, he had been chosen.  Just... not in a good way. Not the way he would've wanted to be special, when he was young and still believed in shining, untarnished heroes.   
  


  
-0-0-0-   
  
  
The upper halls of this horror movie set had been blocked with rubble and warm, pulsing tubes Gorou was very carefully not thinking of as veins.  There'd only been a dim gap serving as a foyer or landing zone between the elevators and the escalators down... and after breaking a nail on the elevator doors, which were either rusted shut or locked, Gorou had decided to try his luck going down.

He was very much regretting this decision.   
  
A third burbling growl joined the two following far too close on Gorou's heels in the gloom.  He'd only gotten the scarcest glimpse of the things -- towering, lumbering shapes only vaguely human -- before the first had turned a corner and almost stepped on him.  The only reason it hadn't caught him was that he'd instinctively ducked, then bolted under its taloned swipe; it turned out that the things didn't turn or corner as quickly as he did, but they were faster than him and if he got caught in a long straightaway without any branches to duck down...

The color of the light from a side tunnel was different.  Redder. Had he found the stairs back up? Or an exit? Whatever it was, the swirling, glowing vortex trying to suck up the tracks was too close to the corner for Gorou to actually stop before he fell into it.

It felt like a Portkey, Gorou thought ludicrously as it spat him out onto a dirty concrete floor.  He stumbled a few steps before catching his balance, which was long enough to recognize 1. he was still in the horror movie, and 2. the creatures chasing him had either given up, disappeared, or learned how to shut up.

The room he found himself in was just small enough for him to see the walls before they could vanish into the gloom of this place, and that much only because something in the far corner was glowing a hazy, languid gold.   
  
"Huh, another fan?"

Gorou startled at the voice.  It was a  _ human  _ voice, a man's... the culprit behind bringing him here?

A figure crossed the hazy light, then stepped up close enough to be visible as more than a silhouette.  It was a man, weedy and smug-looking in casual slacks and a plain T-shirt gone brown in the odd light. Behind thick glasses, his eyes shone bright yellow.

He gestured impatiently.  "Sure, I'll sign your cheap Petal Bear shit, brat," and that's when Gorou recognized him as Chideo Kogima, the director-producer-creator-etc. for the brand.  "Pay up already. This is such a sweet gig, I can't believe what you stupid brats will buy if I stamp Petal Bear on it."

What?  "... What?"

The... thing?... laughed nastily, bent and scooped up something from the floor, then stamped it and threw it at Gorou's feet.  Petal Bear's stern face glared up at him from where the bit of stained rock had landed. "A real collector's item! Ten thousand yen!  Cough up the lunch money if Daddy won't buy it, you can stand to skip a few meals for a one-of-a-kind piece of memorabilia--"

Gorou stared, confusion twisting with every sneered word.

After a moment, the thing seemed to notice his patter wasn't getting Gorou to reach for his wallet.  It went very, very still, and then its face twisted. "Pay for that already!"

Well.  There was only one answer Gorou had to that.  "No."

"It's fucking Petal Bear!"

"It's a rock."  He wouldn't give up his money to the bullies at school, or the dropouts everybody knew were getting recruited by yakuza, and he wasn't going to give it to some man-shaped yellow-eyed horror creature that did nothing but scream at him.  "I don't want it."

"You goddamn kids want everything!"  It shuddered, then burst into a shower of black goo that Gorou ducked, leaving a floating Jack-o-lantern dressed as a witch in its place.  " _ GIVE ME MY MONEY! _ " it screeched, blasting fire everywhere.   


Gorou threw himself out of the way -- shit shit shit it was capable of much worse than screaming -- and ran for the vortex.  He'd take his chances with the shadow things!

The vortex wouldn't let him back out.

_ I am going to die. _

Gorou spun, shoulders to the unyielding vortex and the creature's grin burning through the darkness creeping into his vision.  Alone, lost, literally spirited away to some subway hell full of shadows and fire, and he was going to die over some fucking  _ rock  _ and a money-grubbing  _ monster _ \--

A monster like all rich men were.

His heart thundered in his ears.

The flames tinged blue.

A monster like his father was.

_ Wilt thou die upon command, as thy mother before thee? _

The fire burned blue, white, white-hot, searing over his face, his fingertips, etching towards the heart whose beat couldn't drown out the voice.

_ Wilt thou die for this petty lord?  For his toys and games? _

It burned, it burned and Gorou--

_ I am thou. _

\-- Gorou --

_ Thou art I. _

\-- did not want--

_ Call my name. _

The fires were etching lines into his heart.

\-- did not --

He knew those shapes.

\-- want --

A name.

\-- to die!

" _ Robin Hood! _ "

The rest was a blur, all blinding white armor and golden light, light that blasted through the monster and tore the vortex open, letting Gorou escape into tunnels devoid of the lumbering shadows that had chased him here.  The stairs back up were just two turns away, and the elevator doors stood open to a clean cubicle.

"Now returning to the real world.  Thank you for your hard work."

Gorou stared at the phone in his shaking hand -- when had he grabbed it? -- as the horror subway shimmered and melted away, leaving only his normal platform as the mysterious black app closed itself.    


What had just happened?

 

-0-0-0

 

"It was all I could do to make it out alive."  Now knowing what he did... "I never looked to see what became of the man."

Sae leaned forward, dipping her head to catch Gorou's eyes.  He followed her gaze back up from the tabletop. "I'll look into it," she told him seriously.  "You know this may be another charge against you?"   
  
"I know."   
  
The guards returned him to his cell in silence.   



	3. Interlude One

" _Dia_."

The magic washed softly through Gorou, a trickle of painlessness deep in his muscles and bones, tiny fingertips warm against his temple.

"Easy," Lavenza murmured.  "I'm not entirely here. Don't let on."

Gorou kept his eyes shut.  He could tell it would hurt to try and open the only one he could, the one nearest Lavenza's hand; the other was so swollen he could feel the touch of brow to cheek, and he was sure that one wouldn't be opening for several days.

"I can't do much.  This will ease your pain, though, and ensure the damages aren't permanent."  She shifted closer, skirt drifting across his shoulder. "You're such an  _ idiot _ ."

Were those tears in her voice?  Gorou couldn't tell... the sudden snap of fury was much more familiar.  As was the gasp of horror somewhere farther behind Lavenza.

"What happened here?!" a woman asked sharply.

"The prisoner got belligerent," yesterday's older cop replied, with the same studied disinterest that had him at least pretending to buy into the night shift's lies.  So the woman must've been the rookie who'd helped him escort Gorou to Sae.

A hissed intake of air.  Then out. Then, with a curiosity that was clearly trying to subdue a temper, she asked, "And he couldn't just be put back in his cell?  I'm sure I know at least three joint locks that would've done less damage."

" _ Officer Satonaka _ .  You forget your place."

".... Sir."  Her voice sounded strangled.  "My apologies, sir."

Huh.  Seemed like she might be a plant against the conspiracy instead of for it.  Or she could just be a very good actress.

"Go make sure his file's got a note denying visitors til he's recovered," the older cop ordered.

"... Yes sir."


	4. Part Two - Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double header today, because the first one was so short. Be sure you've caught the one before this!

It was a couple of days into January before the guards let Gorou back out of his cell.  He was careful not to touch the tender spots remaining, and to walk to breakfast as though he wasn't feeling any pain.   


There were no mirrors in the communal showers (where the other boys pointedly didn't glance towards him, refusing to stand witness to whatever had kept him out of gen pop for a week), but Gorou had noticed on his first day that the cafeteria line passed close enough to a stainless-steel appliance in the kitchen that he could look at the damage, if he was careful to keep his head down and peer through his lashes.

The bruising on his face had faded to a yellow that could be dismissed as a trick of the light, and the swelling was gone except for a bit around his eye, which also could be dismissed as just natural asymmetry.

Two days of classes, almost like real school uniformed in the prison jumpsuits, passed in regimented, sex-segregated silence.  Gorou's fellow inmates clustered in loose groups during the two breaks they were allowed, murmuring quietly to each other and eyeing him whenever he came too close.  Some looked more wary than others; Gorou stayed far away from anyone who glanced at him too challengingly.

Just like the orphanage.

Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the guard with his rookie plant took Gorou from the computer skills lab and escorted him back to the interview room.

The woman inside sat casually sidelong to the table, tapping it with fingertips left bared by motorcycle gloves.  Her leather jacket, cut much like a professional blazer, looked black against her teal blouse and under the stark lights; it was only the black of her gloves that showed the jacket's true color was a deep blue, one that almost exactly matched the hair wisping up into short curls on the nape of her neck.

It took a moment for Gorou to recognize her without her signature hat.

"... Shirogane-san."

Naoto Shirogane, the Detective Prince(ss) raised one thin brow, and nodded him into his seat.  "Akechi-san," she replied, rather less starstruck than he'd probably sounded. Then she straightened and turned to sit properly, folding her arms atop the table.  Her eyes scanned slowly over what she could see of him above the tabletop, lingering at the faint yellowing he'd seen along his jaw and the hint of swelling still circling his eye.

"You're an elusive young man," she eventually said.

Gorou couldn't tell what she meant by that.  "... I may take that as a compliment," he said carefully.

"You should," she agreed easily, still neutral.  "Nearly three years, and even without a government agent hampering my work, I doubt I would have caught you for a while yet."

Gorou felt his face go warm.  A murderous crime spree was hardly something he should be proud of, and yet... and yet,  _ Naoto Shirogane _ had acknowledged him.

"Masayoshi Shidou's lawyer is going to try to get him off on the sheer implausibility of the testimony," Shirogane continued, and the warmth Gorou had been feeling dropped with his heart.  "Another world, attacking people from inside their minds without benefit of any sort of forensic evidence or even personal contact..." she trailed off leadingly.

"But..." Gorou paused.  Frowned down at the table and brought his hand up to rest against his chin as he thought.  What was Shirogane looking to get out of him? An assessment of his faculties, perhaps to see how much of his thinking had been his own... but what was she looking for?  ... Lack of forensic evidence and how that related to Shidou's charges...

He met her dark gaze.  "Isn't Shidou being charged with conspiracy?  Instigation of assault and murder? Not the actual violence itself, but the ordering of them?"  Shirogane's eyes brightened faintly. "It's irrelevant to his case how it was done, just that he ordered crimes and they were committed."

"Very good."  She smiled secretively.  "The lawyer isn't going to try to contest that Shidou ordered the attacks.  He's planning to argue that they weren't done as purposeful actions on his part, but appeared to be nothing but mysterious coincidences to Shidou.  Done via eavesdropping and hearsay by a fanatic supporter, perhaps."

Gorou stared at her incredulously.  "There are over thirty incidents, I've confessed to all of them, and his lawyer's going to argue  _ coincidence _ ?"

"He's counting on a judgement panel unwilling to believe in other worlds."  From her tone, that was somehow not going to be a problem. "So, I've read how you got started."  Shirogane leaned back. "Tell me how you turned to casework."  
  


-0-0-0  
  


Gorou had long since found that the other kids didn't tend to come close to the matron's office.  In this facility there was a battered folding table shoved into an awkward corner just outside it, covered in a cheap plastic tarp and a varying number of old magazines, fliers for tutoring and job ads, and the matron's daily newspapers.  (As far as Gorou had found, she only read the sports section and front-page headlines, and left them out to seem more cultured to prospective parents that never came.) The table was perfect for doing his homework under, far from the noise, shoving, and 'accidental' spills when Gorou refused to let anyone copy off him.   


Today, the matron had left her office door open a crack -- there was a loose screw in the catch that she either hadn't noticed yet or didn't care about -- and Gorou could faintly hear her muttering through the flimsy plastic sheeting hiding him from the world.

Something in the office thunk-thumped, like a worn shoe kicking a desk.  "No money for new coats this year," the matron grumbled, and Gorou stopped writing.  "Plenty for fancy new publicity-stunt phones, but not for winter coats." Footsteps clumped out of the office, the matron's shadow passing against the plastic, and then all the papers above him rustled and flapped.  "It's like they  _ want _ the kids to go find work instead of study."  She stumped back into the office, and the papers landed in the trash can by her desk, sending it rocking in muffled metallic thuds.  "And  _ stay  _ gone," she snapped.  "I have to kick them out if they can support themselves!"

Which.  Was something no one had ever told Gorou.  And small wonder: he certainly wouldn't stay here if he had the chance to get out.  No one would. But...

... But.

There was something fishy about the phone, with its app, and how they'd only been given to the kids over thirteen for this publicity stunt.

Gorou stayed very still until the matron went to start dinner, then slipped out from under the table.  The job fliers were gone again. The tutoring ones had been spread out to cover the gaps.

When Gorou looked at the table after school the next day, the job fliers were back.

There weren't any for housing, Gorou noticed on his third look, when he went to see what jobs and pay were actually available.  Not that knowing you'd need housing would deter anyone here, but if you went into this for pocket money, or to pay for tutoring after failing entrance exams -- which was a perfectly viable strategy, getting an extra year to study even if it was humiliating -- and suddenly you found yourself kicked out...

Who was benefiting from doing this?

Gorou needed to look into the publicity stunt.

 

-0-0-0-  
  


Shirogane's expression tightened.  "I think I remember that case."

Gorou inclined his head.  "I managed to get a name from googling for articles around the time we received the phones, and cross-referencing to the facility's tax documents."

"Wouldn't they have been locked up in the matron's office?"

"Let's just say I learned lockpicking young."  
  


-0-0-0-

 

This was the stupidest thing Gorou had ever done, he was sure of it.  But Umemura Nissho's address was unlisted, and his office was in the city treasury building.  There was a security desk in the building's lobby, easily visible through tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, and Gorou was nowhere near old enough to go in and pretend he had a billing or tax issue.  He couldn't get at Umemura or his records.

But.

The Shadow monster thing in Mementos had spilled his true thoughts without prompting.  And Gorou had Robin Hood now... what if he actually asked questions of a Shadow? Might he get truthful answers before the Shadow became a beast and attacked?

Standing around in the train station dithering wasn't going to let Gorou find out either way.

He hit the app.

"You want a job?" Umemura's Shadow asked him, some interminable time and a good dozen random tunnel-Shadows later, after Gorou had found his vortex-pocket.  "You're pretty enough. Not my taste, but not bad for a worthless orphan brat. It'll pay better than deliveries, you won't have to go crawling back to that shithole and raise my urban budget."

Gorou swallowed back bile.  "No," he choked out past a rising tide of stricken fury.  "I'm going to get a high school scholarship."

The Shadow snorted.  "Sure you are," it scoffed.  "Scholarships are for real people, some parentless hack isn't going to get one.  You'll be bending over by next year anyway, you might as well do it in a way that lines my pockets."

"Shut up!"  He wouldn't.  The Shadow was wrong, it was lying, it-- it couldn't control Gorou's only way out, he wasn't going to end up on the streets and then-- then--  " _ Shut up!  _  You're lying!  You sick, disgusting--"

Robin Hood would only let Gorou get away.  It couldn't... it couldn't really hurt this thing, couldn't make it... make it...

_ Suffer _ , something laughed in his heart, hateful and burning.

And Robin

Hood

snapped.

" _ Loki! _ "  
  


-0-0-0-  
  


"And on November fifteenth, Umemura ran naked into the street from an illegal brothel, still fully..." Shirogane grimaced.  "Well. I'm sure you saw the news reports at some point."

"I left his Shadow screaming."  He'd forgotten his innocent horror at the Shadow's... offer.  How Loki had come from a need to tear it to shreds, long before he'd been capable of actually.  Actually. Killing someone. The Shadow hadn't even gotten violent yet and he'd fled with its screams echoing from the tunnels all the way back to reality.

That had never happened again, the screaming being audible outside someone's vortex.  Yaldabaoth must've noticed Gorou had been spooked.

Shirogane tapped the table sharply where his gaze had fallen, catching his attention again and taking the memory of screaming from his ears.  "Hey. You saved a lot of people." Gorou blinked. "Maybe not in the best way, but sometimes there isn't a best way, just an effective one. At that point, you were a hero."

Gorou blinked back a certain watery heat behind his eyes.

"Still in junior high and you went back in to face Shadows alone."  Shirogane shook her head ruefully. "Hero."  



	5. Part 5 - Phoenix

_Haikei -_

_The snowflakes blew against my window all night, rattling it furiously, and this morning thick icicles hung down like fangs to enforce a winter seclusion._

_When your sister came home and said you'd been hurt--!  I had to stop writing this letter several times over the next few days.  What could I possibly say? I don't believe for a minute that you were at fault here.  We've known too many cruel adults this past year alone to trust in that._

_If I could cast a spell to cure your injuries, I would cast until I ran out of power.  I think we all would._

_Please recover quickly.  We hate that you're in pain._

_Keigu, Akira_

_Jan 11th, 2017_

_Gorou_

  
-0-0-0  


The next several days passed in a certain oppressive dullness.  Classes were small in the prison, with no one willing to talk to Gorou or even approach him too closely.  It was far too obvious that the police had too much interest in Gorou for it to be safe.

Futaba delivered Akira's second letter on Thursday, the same as the week before.  Gorou didn't mention That Man, and let her chatter on about Featherman and the sheer weirdness of the season where they had to search for Feather Blue.

... That season had... sort of predicted the entire mess with Yaldabaoth and the Velvet Room, come to think of it.

Gorou kept silent on that observation, but he was pretty sure Futaba had picked up on the same thing.  Why else talk about such an old season?

Something was going on here.  Gorou would have to wait for more information.

The chance for more information came on Sunday, with another interview.

Gorou blinked on the threshold of the interview room, pausing incrementally when he saw who was waiting for him.

... Or rather, 'what'.

The visitor looked to be a girl about his age, bright foreign-blonde and blue-eyed, in a tailored black skirt suit.  Her hands, folded on the table, looked as though they were in white fingerless gloves to the casual glance; her ears seemed hidden under an enameled headband with headphones, as if a jeweller had been directed to create a chassis to hide hearing aids and a severe ear deformity.  Neither gloves nor headband sat in a way that they could be separate from the girl's body, though. And her eyes, when she glanced calmly at Gorou, didn't quite reflect the light the way vitreous fluid would.

The rude cop shoved Gorou roughly into the room, but Gorou managed to sit down quickly enough that the cop couldn't make the chair hurt.

"Fascinating," Gorou told the robot.

"Aigis," she replied.

Her voice was almost perfectly human, too.  That was _amazing_.  "Akechi Gorou," Gorou said.  "But you already knew that. How may I help you today, Aigis-san?"

Absolutely nothing whirred or clicked when she shifted.  "It is a difficult topic, Akechi-san, and my duties do not permit me much time.  May I be blunt?"

She was aware of social protocols _and_ able to bypass that programming.  "... Please do."

"I confirmed the body of the leader of the phantom thieves in the morgue."

Gorou's good mood evaporated.  "... Oh," he managed to say.

Aigis's gaze dropped for a moment, like an apologetic bow.  "I do recall Christmas Eve as well, Akechi-san, and I have seen the results."  That was very open-ended a comment, but... she most likely meant Akira's survival?  Her posture shifted towards an unabashed, deep-rooted grief, at least that's what Gorou would've understood it as if she were human.  "I believe the phrase is, 'I am asking for a friend.'"

"... In return, the phrase is, I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," Aigis said.  "He was a dear friend. A bit of a Wild Card, as I was for a time, but kind to a fault."

Oh.   _Oh._  "... I can tell you how Christmas Eve worked, but I don't think it will help you."  And Gorou explained what Igor and Lavenza had told him about Shrive and his reversed Wild Card.  That it had completely inverted; that he had to dig his Personae painfully from his soul, unable to connect with other people for strength and insight.

He'd restored Akira with those Personae, with their strength and knowledge, and the power of Shakti, whom he suspected wasn't exactly a Persona at all.  But it had all come from himself, all except for Akira's own soul, since Gorou was... unable to... reach out.

To connect.

Unlike a true Wild Card.

"... so you see," Gorou finished, slowly and cautiously, watching the dejection in Aigis' shoulders, her downcast eyes, "I couldn't repeat the feat, even if I knew your friend.  Was... was he a normal Card?"

She nodded, one tiny bob of her short blonde hair.

"Then I should think the solution obvious."

Her head snapped up with the faintest metallic click.

"Or at least, an attempted solution," Gorou continued, "Though I'm not sure how you would go about implementing it."  If Lavenza came back some night... but he couldn't withhold the idea until after a consult that may never happen. That was a cruel hope.  "Take shifts."

Aigis blinked.

Then, slowly and sweetly, she smiled.  "Thank you for your time, Akechi-san."  
  


-0-0-0  
  


"You've put my Master into quite the state, dear guest."

Gorou rolled over to meet Lavenza's bright gaze.  "That was quick," he murmured. "What time is it?"

"Hm."  Lavenza fluffed out her skirts and sat delicately on the edge of Gorou's cot.  A stray lock of her hair trailed over Gorou's bare wrist, dragging with the faint stickiness of corn silk.  "It is the same night as in which you went to sleep. Beyond that..." She shrugged.

Time was a bit odd in the cognitive dimensions.  Mementos, the Palaces, Christmas Eve... perhaps time was a bit academic to Lavenza.  "How did Aigis-san manage to contact you so quickly?" Gorou tried. "If she has a line to the Velvet Room..."

If she had.  If her... builder?  Creator? Employer?... had access, as a Wild Card should... wouldn't she have noticed something wrong?  Or that she'd been cut off?

"She hasn't," Lavenza answered simply, cutting off that train of thought.  "But we could hardly help but notice when two Wild Cards spoke." Her eyes brightened further, a smile budding hesitant on her face.  "My Master has not been so intrigued in a very long time, Akechi Gorou. He's calling my siblings home."

Siblings?  "... Siblings?"

Lavenza nodded almost shyly.  "They left before I was born," she said, glancing down.  One finger brushed a wrinkle from the hem of her dress. "My eldest sister and brother have been doing what they can for the Great Seal, and my first sister has been wandering many years seeking the solution you offered so readily."

The eldest wasn't the first?  ... Time was academic to her, after all...

"I... wonder," she murmured, the word clearly as strange a concept as time to her, "what they're like."

Gorou could hardly imagine.  Older-seeming Lavenzas. She was so very subtly not human, nor childlike, and neither had her halves been.  There just was no frame of reference to guess at what maturity was like in her species, much less family. "... So it'll work?" Gorou asked, unable to contribute any other thought to the conversation.  "Taking shifts?"

Lavenza glanced down at him.  "We have no idea, my guest," she answered simply.  "Which is why my master is so fascinated."  Her gaze went distant, smile still playing about her lips. "Humanity's potential is truly vast."

  
-0-0-0

 

It was very quiet after Lavenza left, except for Futaba's visit Thursday afternoon.  


_Haikei -_

_The days are short and the nights are clear and cold.  As we top up the oil in our space heaters, we look to the waning winter moon, hoping you can see it too._

_I've been swamped with homework and studying this month.  Sometimes the letters swim before my eyes, and sometimes the page seems too bright to read, especially under the school lights.  You may have noticed the paper for these letters isn't white. I think I'm a bit photosensitive now._

_At least most of my jobs are in dim stores.  I'm looking for photovoltaic contacts, you know how they have glasses that change from clear to dark in sunlight?  I'm hoping there's a contact lens version._

_I look forward to writing again._

_Keigu, Akira_

_Jan 18th, 2017_

_Gorou_

_p.s. - enclosed is a picture of the cat commandeering the bathhouse bucket for his own little hottub.  He's cold too!_

  


The enclosed picture was not a photograph, but a colorful ink drawing made with Yuusuke's unmistakeable skill on an index card.  Morgana looked rather more scruffy than he had before Christmas, but that might've been the waterlogging of his fur rather than any particular effect of the loss of cognitive reality.  The collected hopes of humanity had one baleful blue eye half-open, eyeing the viewer like he would bite anyone who laid a finger on his pink plastic hottub, and his ears were flattened under a folded washcloth.

Gorou sighed, tucked the picture and letter away, and pulled on his socks against the chill of the concrete floor of his cell.  He envied the cat so much right now. He missed baths.

(Don't think about it.)

In the line for soggy rice and metallic pickles, he missed curry.

(Don't think about it.)

Running in line with his cellblock group, he missed the thieves.

(Don't think about it.)

A particularly tall boy loomed close in his peripheral vision, and Gorou jogged a couple steps over to let him pass.

(He missed Aki--)

His kidneys exploded in pain.

_Ah_ , Gorou thought, the icy concrete digging into his cheek and his entire back on fire, the world fading fast.   _Shrive's knifing was accurate to life_.

Black.

Nothing.

Black.

" _Oh shit oh shit oh shit I don't_ have _Dia_ ," a woman muttered, quick and panicked.  " _Goddamit tell me I didn't lose it in the wash_ \--"

Nothing.

Blue.

Gorou's back felt sunburnt, an ache digging breathlessly deep into his core, but...

"You are most fortunate, my guest, that the Chariot had a bead on her," Lavenza murmured.  The darkness lightened for a second, the cooling wash of a wordless Dia letting Gorou catch a breath before the fire rose once more.  "The remnants of Ruin are doing their best to finish you.

" _We will not let them_ ."  She finished fiercely.  Then tiny, gloved fingers brushed across his forehead.  "Rest, dear guest. You have more allies than you know."  


-0-0-0  


The rude cop wasn't one of the ones assigned to stand guard in the prison clinic while Gorou was there, nor were any of the Conspiracy plants on the night shift who'd smacked Gorou around enough to land him here less than a month ago.

Satonaka, though, showed up promptly at 6 am after Lavenza left, and every morning thereafter.  The first day was spent in a dire silence, most of which Gorou was only vaguely aware of.

The second, she stepped out for nearly half an hour, and returned with tiny dark splotches on her uniform.  They weren't discolored like blood or food would be, so... water. It was an odd angle for water to splash up from a sink, though...

The third day, she vanished again in the early morning, while Gorou's congee was still vaguely lukewarm on his breakfast tray.  When she returned, it wasn't quite cold yet, but Gorou was still slowly plowing through it. It hurt to eat, but he couldn't waste food.  He just couldn't.

"Letter for you," Satonaka said, dropping a folded piece of notebook paper on his tray.  "And your sister would probably have said hi if she wasn't so upset. Poor kid."

... Ah.  Tear stains, perhaps.  If Futaba had showed up to visit yesterday.  It'd been Thursday, after all...

The letter, when Gorou unfolded the page, hadn't been rewritten in probably-Haru's hand.  


_DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME_  


Gorou had no idea what to say to that.


End file.
